Been trying to soley farm motes with our airships since day after patch when they were discovered. Airships usually takes a day and a half to do their trips. Here are the results.

Airship 1: survey 104, retrieval 86, favor 100 - has yet to bring back motes from sectors 6, 13, and 17, out of 10 tries
Airship 2: survey 114, retrieval 104, favor 118 - has yet to bring back motes from sectors 6, 13, and 17, out of 10 tries
Airship 4: survey 124, retrieval 122, favor 126 - has obtained 5 motes from 1 trip to sector 6. Yet to acquire motes from 13 and 17, out of 8 tries

So I'm not sure if RNG is just horrid crap as usual (like with retainer ventures and minions), or if you need a certain # of survey/favor in order to have a slim chance at getting these, or if SE changed the RNG factor to obtaining all the things overall. There's rarely any on the MB and not many mog homes either, maybe about 6 or 7 total in all the wards in all 3 cities. Mainly getting deep-blue crystals, empty crystals/clay, chemically treated chimera hides, and rarely some materia from these trips.
Have noticed wind factors vary in what's obtained; No wind = A few items (mainly junk like empty crystals/clay) + low quantity, High winds = better loot (HQ materials and materia) + higher quantity, Turbulent/Violent winds = junk items + low quantity (pretty much the same as no wind.).